20 December 2015

Climate plans outdated in wake of Paris talks

For years, advocates of action on climate change have debated the
merits of renewables versus nuclear energy and emissions trading schemes
versus carbon taxes. Yet the pace of the transition to zero
emissions — which will ultimately determine the amount of climate
devastation we suffer and the economic approach we take — has rarely
been a subject of interest. In the wake of the Paris Agreement, that is
fortunately beginning to change.

UK Met Office says 2015 (provisionally) will be 0.1C warmer than record set in 2014, and 1C warmer than 1850-1900 baseline. 2016 is forecast to be more than 0.1C warmer than 2015. Read more.

Bill McKibben, for one, emphasized the need for speed in The Guardian Sunday, following the conclusion of the Paris talks:
“Our
only hope is to decisively pick up the pace. In fact, pace is now the
key word for climate...Pace – velocity, speed, rate, momentum, tempo. We
know where we’re going now; no one can doubt that the fossil fuel age
has finally begun to wane, and that the sun is now shining on, well,
solar. But the question, the only important question, is: how fast.”
We
agree entirely, and we also agree with McKibben that the climate
movement’s primary job is to increase the speed of this transition as
much as possible. In order to accomplish this, the movement needs to
make sure politicians both recognize climate change as an existential
crisis and champion science-based emergency plans to protect
civilization and the natural world. When politicians seek to minimize
the scale of the crisis, or the necessary response, we must issue
constructive criticism and challenge them to do better.

When Bernie Sanders announced his “People Before Polluters” platform on 5 December, McKibben and other environmental leaders seemed to lose their bearings. Annie Leonard of Greenpeace described the plan as “a powerful call for climate justice and decisive action,” while McKibben said,
“Bernie’s vision of a transformed America is powerful, because it
recognizes both the ecological need and the human priority.” The media
has followed suit, describing the plan as “sweeping” and “aggressive.” The Washington Post’s John Wagner characterized the plan as “an environmentalist’s wish list.”

In the rush to praise the Sanders climate plan, leading environmentalists have failed to note that Hillary Clinton ran on the exact same emissions reduction target – 80 percent cuts by 2050 – in 2007. The climate crisis has grown much worse in the past eight years, and the science has become ever clearer that carbon gradualism of
this kind is a recipe for disaster. Given Sanders’ promising rhetoric
on climate change, and his courageous advocacy on many other issues, we
are surprised that “People Before Polluters” embraces many of the
untenable assumptions of a failed establishment climate politics.

Emergency Rhetoric, but a Plan Based Upon the 2°C Target

Senator
Sanders is an exciting presidential candidate in many ways. Loyalty to
him is understandable. He speaks the truth about the collapse of the
middle class and the corruption of our democracy. He is mobilizing the
public to fight back against the interests that are wrecking our
country. Perhaps most importantly, Sanders is acting as a truth-teller
on the climate crisis, calling it “cataclysmic” and “the greatest national security threat,” telling Chris Matthews that we must treat climate change “like a war” and arguing that the United States should “lead the world” in addressing the crisis. In response to the recent Paris Agreement, Sanders appropriately characterized it as a step forward that “goes nowhere near far enough.”

Sanders’
climate plan contains many positive elements, such as a carbon tax,
bans on the expansion of new fossil fuel infrastructure and on all new
fossil fuel extraction on federal lands, and “massive investment” in
renewable energy and public transit.

However,
“People Before Polluters” fails to translate Sanders’ emergency
rhetoric into action at emergency speed. The plan aims to cut U.S.
carbon emissions 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 and 80 percent by
2050. This emissions reduction framework is also the basis of Sanders’
new legislation, “The Climate Protection and Justice Act,” which explicitly aims to limit global warming below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

The
2°C degree framework has long been criticized as extremely dangerous
and has now been rendered outdated by the Paris Agreement. Under
pressure from vulnerable nations such as the Marshall Islands,
negotiators of the agreement decided to pursue a limit of 1.5°C global
warming.

It is concerning that Sanders decided to embrace the 2°C framework. Former NASA scientist James Hansen has repeatedly described the
2°C temperature target as a “prescription for disaster.” In 2009,
Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the Sudanese chairman of the G77, urged the
world community to abandon the target: “Two degrees centigrade [of
warming] translates into 3.75 degrees in Africa, which means basically
Africa is being turned into a furnace. That’s basically certain death
for Africa.” Not only would 2°C of warming devastate crop yields across the planet, it would likely cause the complete collapse of the Greenland ice sheet and an enormous sea-level rise that would render the planet “ungovernable.” In addition, warming well below 2°C would likely cause a massive, long-term release
of carbon dioxide and methane from thawing Arctic permafrost. A plan
that incinerates Africa is not a plan for climate justice.

Furthermore, “People Before Polluters” ignores the fact that current concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are likely enough to
eventually produce at least 1.5°C, and very possibly more than 2°C, of
warming above pre-industrial levels. At current rates of fossil fuel
burning, the planet is likely to cross 2ºC of warming by 2036, according to our advisor, Dr. Michael Mann.

“We have no carbon budget left
for what I would say is a morally acceptable safe level [of warming]. We
have seen 1 degree temperature rise already and we know that people are
being severely impacted by that as it is today.”

Humanity
is in a race against time, but “People Before Polluters” would have the
U.S. pump billions of tons of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into our
atmosphere for decades to come. Indeed, it doesn’t set any timetable for
zero emissions at all. This is a plan for catastrophic warming.

How Fast Do We Need To Go?

Justin Gillis of the New York Times reported Sunday that limiting warming to 1.5°C would require global industrial greenhouse gas emissions to come to an end by 2030. Climate researcher Glenn Peters has projected that
meeting the 1.5C target would require a global fossil fuel phase-out
between 2025 and 2030, as well as a large-scale effort to remove excess
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Similarly, a group of scientists writing in The Hindu found
that developed countries such as the U.S. would need to reach zero
emissions in “the next 5-10 years” for a 50 to 66 percent chance of
limiting warming to 1.5°C.

There
is no conceivable way to achieve such a quick transition to zero
emissions primarily using market-based mechanisms such as carbon
pricing. As Gillis concluded in a 15 December 2014 news analysis
— the only way to stabilize temperatures even lower than the now
discredited 2°C “guardrail” would be either through “a technological
miracle, or a mobilization of society on a scale unprecedented in
peacetime.”

Only
a wartime-style mobilization, in which government regulation mandates
the early retirement or conversion to zero emissions of all
greenhouse-gas emitting plant and equipment, could possibly facilitate
such drastic changes on such a tight time-frame. In other words, we need
an all-hands-on-deck, emergency mobilization. Carbon pricing could play
a modest role in such a program – but not a central one.

The Problem with a Simple Carbon Tax

Sanders’
plan aims to drive the decarbonization of the economy primarily using a
carbon tax and large-scale public investment. Sanders told Ezra
Klein that he prefers a carbon tax because “it’s the simple and direct
way to do it.” Unfortunately, the reliance on a simple carbon tax as the
primary decarbonization tool limits the rate at which the U.S. can cut
emissions. Raising the price too high and too fast will likely cause
economic and political chaos.

A study of
a carbon tax very similar to the fee-and-dividend policy proposed by
the group Citizen’s Climate Lobby showed that the tax, if implemented
next year, would reduce U.S. carbon emissions 33% from current levels by
2025, and 52% by 2035 – which is not even close to the 100% reductions
we need in the next 5-10 years. A tax starting at $10 per ton and rising
$10 per ton every year would lead to these emissions cuts, according to
the study. Although the carbon tax in Sanders’ “Climate Protection and
Justice Act” would begin at a higher base of $15 per ton, it would rise
at a considerably more gradual rate of $2 per year through 2020, $3 per
year through 2030, $4 per year through 2032, and $5 per year through
2035, presumably diminishing the rate of emissions reductions.

A wartime-scale climate mobilization would also involve enormous levels of public investment – on the order of trillions of dollars annually
— but would not rely primarily on inherently gradual carbon pricing
mechanisms to drive the change process. Simplicity has its merits, but
not when it gets in the way of saving our climate and our civilization.

Emergency Mobilization is Necessary

It’s
up to brave politicians, alarmed citizens and the growing climate
movement to make what is scientifically necessary politically feasible.
That is precisely what The Climate Mobilization is trying to accomplish.

We
have consulted with experts across the world on what action is actually
needed to restore a safe climate. What’s become clear to us is that the
stark truth of climate change – and the scale of the solution needed –
is rarely stated honestly. Rather, it’s often distorted by layers of
denial, confusion, and euphemism. In his characterization of
the social atmosphere at the Paris talks, Kevin Anderson aptly
describes the willful delusions of the entire climate policy community,
as well:

The
whole setup, not just the scientists, the research community around it
that funds the research, the journalists, events like this, we’re all
being —we’re all deliberately being slightly sort of self-delusional. We
all know the situation is much more severe than we’re prepared to voice
openly. And we all know this. So it is a — this is a collective sort of
façade, a mask that we have.

The truth is that the atmosphere very likely contains enough greenhouse gases to eventually warm the earth more than 2°C, and that humanity has no “carbon budget” left
to burn if we apply basic safety and risk management standards to our
treatment of the climate system and civilization. The necessity of a
wartime-scale climate mobilization is essentially a hidden consensus among environmental experts. It is an idea that has been espoused in one form or another by McKibben, Michael Mann, John Kerry, Joseph Romm, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, and many others.

What Now?

We
hope Senator Sanders will update his climate plan so that it delivers
on his emergency rhetoric, is consistent with the science, and will
protect vulnerable people and species across the planet. This means
driving the U.S. to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 and
committing to a massive effort to remove excess carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere. Such a huge, rapid transition of our energy and agricultural
systems can only be accomplished through an emergency, wartime-scale
mobilization. We would be honored if Senator Sanders joined the
thousands of Americans and the growing number of elected officials who have signed the Pledge to Mobilize, which is our outline of what such a plan would look like.

We
also ask the climate-alarmed and the leaders of the climate movement to
work to make the climate mobilization we so badly need politically
feasible, and then politically dominant. It is our job to speak the
difficult truth and to build broad support for emergency measures. We
need visionary leadership from Senator Sanders, but we also need to create a political environment in which he can champion a WWII-scale Climate Mobilization, and win.